Thomas Breen photo
City Acting Budget Director Michael Gormany.
An aldermanic committee signed off on transferring $75,000 from the city’s rainy day fund to cover the cost of a mayoral transition team — with the caveat that that final dollar amount will likely drop, maybe even by half, before the full board grants its final approval.
That recommendation came Monday night during the regular monthly Finance Committee meeting in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.
The committee alders unanimously recommended approval of Mayor Toni Harp’s request that the Board of Alders transfer $75,000 from the city’s rainy day fund towards a transition line item in the current fiscal year’s budget.
If Democratic mayoral nominee Justin Elicker defeats Harp in the Nov. 5 general election, then a portion of that money would be used, per the City Charter, to fund “at least one secretary, one professional staff assistant, furnished office space” and other similar assistance approved by the Board of Alders to help ease the prospective new mayor-elect’s transition into office.
At Monday night’s hearing, city Acting Budget Director Michael Gormany told the alders that the last time this mayoral transfer budget line item was used, at the end of 2013 as former Mayor John DeStefano prepared to hand over the reins of City Hall to Mayor-Elect Harp, the outgoing mayoral administration needed only to spend between $30,000 and $35,000 on the transition.
The $75,000 included in this current recommended budget transfer, Gormany said, is an arbitrary maximum that the mayor’s office selected in order to make sure that, if Elicker wins, the city has more than enough money to make sure that he is prepared. The proposed transfer wouldn’t immediately take $75,000 out of the rainy day fund and put it into an Other Contractual Services bucket in the budget, Gormany said. Rather, it would allow the alders to transfer “up to” $75,000, pending on how much the Harp Administration and a prospective Elicker Administration actually need.
Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand and Chair Evette Hamilton.
“I don’t quite understand the transfer ‘up to’ because that’s not the language of the resolution,” Westville Alder and Finance Committee Vice-Chair Adam Marchand said.
That’s technically correct, Gormany replied. The resolution doesn’t currently include the language “up to.” But that is the intent of the resolution. He said he would be open to the alders amending the item to include the language “not to exceed.”
The destination of the transfer, however, is a line item in the Other Contractual Services area of the budget that is specifically reserved for mayoral transitions, Gormany added. This money, if transferred, could not be used for just any purpose by the mayoral administration. It would have to be limited to charter- and alder-approved transition activities.
During the aldermanic deliberations before the committee took its vote, Marchand urged his colleagues to consider amending the proposed resolution to an amount smaller than $75,000 before the full Board of Alders votes on the matter in November.
“When you put a number there,” he said, “you’re also setting an expectation. It may be worth us saying we expect it’s going to cost $50,000 or less.”
That sounds reasonable, Board of Alders President and West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers said. “If the $75,000 number was just arbitrary, I think we need to do some work before the full board actually votes on it.”
I'd be cautious about cutting this, even if only half of it typically gets used. Let's say that Trump, or someone less famous with a history of mismanagement and corruption, becomes mayor for a term in some future year. Cleaning up that mess is going to cost more than $75K.